Tag Archives: Tom Clancy

My Political Thriller Novel: Disunion By Force

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If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’re aware that I wrote a political/military thriller.

Now it’s time to produce the goods and tell you something about the book.

Disunion By Force, written under a pen name, Brian J. Stone, comes out on November 8th. It’s up for an order of physical copies and ebooks everywhere you can purchase a book.

It followed Jackson Reed, a retired US Air Force pilot, investigating a lost top secret military drone.

Jax’s investigation leads him to the top tiers of the political spectrum. He learns a lot about why he was forced out of the Air Force.

I wrote Disunion By Force during the lockdown in 2020. I wrote it from April third until May 4th. Its first draft came in at just over 100,000 words. I’ve edited it, and with the help of my editor, it is down to 79,000 words. I got rid of a lot of things that didn’t work.

Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising was my first experience with books in the genre. I was twelve at the time. I’ve always read above my grade level. I read the early Jack Ryan books and the Mark Greaney books. I am halfway through Greaney’s Grey Man books.

I’ve always wanted to write books like this but didn’t out of fear I’d screw it up. I think Disunion is a good book. I enjoyed writing Jax. He’s a fun, flawed character. I have more in store for him in other novels. I intend to start writing the next book in January and have it ready for publication in July.

I hope you’ll buy a copy when it releases on November 8th.

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Embracing what you fear

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As I’ve said numerous times on here, I avoided writing certain books because of things that happened as a kid.

I worried about what it said about myself, what it said about my writing, and whether my mind wanted to go in too many places at once. This fear has permeated me since I put pen to paper in high school.

The past week was one where I had to have talk with myself about this. I can’t move forward in my writing without either adjusting to writing military/spy/political thrillers, as well as horror, or I can stop writing one or the other. I chose to adjust.

Growing up in the 80’s Tom Clancy was the king of the techno-thriller. I looked up to him as a storyteller. Writing in that playground always scared the hell out of me. Mostly because I am not nor have I ever been in the military, CIA, FBI, or any other acronym.

But writing happens and last April I wrote a book in that genre and it scared the hell out of me for a couple of reasons.

One: I felt it was good.

Two: The fear of judgement from others about writing in genre, and that I’ve said numerous times how disrupted my childhood was because I felt forced to read those books.

But maybe it’s not so much that I felt forced, but that there’s the longstanding obstacle of my relationship with my father. He chose those books and I read them, even though there were other books I wanted to read, I read those.

I attribute my knowledge of history and politics to my father, something that maybe I should deal with personally.

That I’ve now chosen to write in whatever genre rears its head, is possibly a breakthrough for me.

I avoided writing these books because of childhood trauma. As I consider it now, those books did more to help me navigate my teenage years and early twenties, than perhaps anything except Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.

The Chronicles helped me deal with other things.

Now that I’ve gone and changed my author’s bio, and all of my bios on social media, I’m ready to deal with the fact that I love spy books for the simple fact that I enjoy them. I enjoy the hell out of writing them and if not for my father pushing them on me I wouldn’t be writing them today.

Here’s a writing fact for you. I read Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising in sixth grade. That book stayed with me as have most of Clancy’s books.

Have a pleasant week. I’ll be here this week.